Kiss Me
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: Why is it that all of your adventures begin just as day starts to end? Why can you not have adventures in the bright sunshine, or in the darkest night? It is always just as the day draws to a close, year after year, and you don't even question it anymore, as the sun falls and Harry grabs your hand, pulling you along with him on just another little quest.


_**Written for the 'Points and Prompts Competition' by Cheeky Slytherin Lass and Fire the Canon, using prompts: Day, Hermione Granger, Hogwarts Castle, "I saw her standing there in the crowd", broomstick, Harry/Luna, Kiss Me, **__**"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music" – Vladimir Nabokolv, "Clearly, fame isn't everything"-Severus Snape, Fight or Flight (Order of the Phoenix, Second Person. **_

_**Written for the 'If You Dare Challenge' by Slytherin Cat, using prompt # 220, doomsday.**_

_**Written for the 'Ten times Ten Challenge' by Utlaga, using Institution: Hogwarts **_

_**Written for the 'Flower Language Challenge' by Sweet Bitter Life, using **_**Nasturtium: Symbolizes conquest and victory. **Write something post-Battle of Hogwarts

_**This is AU, containing death, mentions of suicide/torture, and other possibly dark subject matters. **_

….

_"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music" – Vladimir Nabokolv_

"_Clearly, fame isn't everything."-Severus Snape_

"_I was the other one-the one who stood on the side, the one who waited, and you never even noticed me. I was the other one, and for a while….it was okay. We were okay."-Deb _

….

Why is it that all of your adventures begin just as day starts to end? Why can you not have adventures in the bright sunshine, or in the darkest night? It is always just as the day draws to a close, year after year, and you don't even question it anymore, as the sun falls and Harry grabs your hand, pulling you along with him on just another little quest. You, Hermione Granger, are stuck following a boy around as day slips to night, and even if you wanted to stop, even if you wanted to say _"No, wait, this isn't what I signed up!_" he's already got ahold of your heart, so you follow after him willingly, day crashing into darkness and you sigh, wondering how it was that you ever could have fallen in love with this mad little boy.

You've fallen in love with him-who could resist Harry Potter, the boy who would save the world-and, even though you know it's foolish, that he can't love you back, that he'll never love you back, you still stand by his side, fighting monsters and stupid teachers, battling your way through seven years at Hogwarts, wondering when your faery-tale would finally draw to an end, with Harry holding your hand, telling you that you've done a _bloody fantastic job, Hermione. _You know he'll stand with you in the end, and he might even whisper those words in your ear, but he'll also turn to Luna and _kiss her on the mouth_, and tell her that she was amazing and beautiful and everything that makes you tingle with jealousy, like a silly school girl who can't seem to get over something so vapid as a boy who would _never love you back. _

"_Clearly, fame isn't everything," _Snape once told Harry during class your very first day in class, and you hadn't even known them then, hadn't known who Harry would become, but you clearly remember despising Snape in that moment, as he sneered down at a poor boy whose only grievance was simply not knowing the answers. You had tried to answer for him, tried to save face for a young child who looked down in shame, but Snape was the "horror of Hogwarts", as Luna once put it, and he did not take kindly to know-it-all Muggleborns. You despise Snape as a teacher, but Harry hates him more, hates him as a person, and you just can't bring it upon yourself to admit how you feel-Dumbledore's in the wrong here, with Harry, isn't he?

Umbridge was almost worse than Snape, really, that terribly awful year that she spent pretending to teach you Defense. When she caught Harry and Ron and you in her office in fifth year, when she tortured Harry for information and called him names and even slapped him-you hated her then, you hated her so much that your wand might have twitched in your hand, except she had taken it away from you. Umbridge, the evil, awful not-teacher who hated children and who had so foolishly followed you and Harry into the Forest, because she didn't think children would ever be smart enough to trick her. It is, in your opinion, _Umbridge's _fault that Ron Weasley is dead, because she wasted your time, because you spent too much time tricking her into following you that you completely forgot the students back up at Hogwarts.

(_It must be Umbridge's fault that Molly Weasley buried her son that year. It cannot be your fault-you cannot allow that, because accepting such truths would only kill you. You had thought you loved him once, that redheaded boy from Hogwarts; you had thought you loved him as you love Harry now, but it wasn't the same, it just wasn't. Ron was obnoxious and rude and arrogant-he was your brother, and you mourned for him when you came running back, as Luna came to meet you with blood smeared across her robes. You had cried over his body as it was carried out of Hogwarts, you had wondered why it was _Ron _of all people who had died. You wished that you had been brave enough to kiss him, just once, because he might have been someone you could fall in love with one day. Instead, he's just another dead boy, and you're just another dying girl._)

You watch as the world around you changes, as the people change, and you wonder how it has come to be that sixteen is _old enough _for all of this, all of this pain and suffering and anger that seems to be surrounding you all the time. You wonder when it became completely normal for you to just _hate _the world, because it was no longer the fantasyland you had thought it was; you're sixteen, now, after all, and isn't that too old to ever think that anyone can live forever, and that you always get the guy. _Get over it, _you tell yourself. _Grow up, act mature. It's just a boy. _And you try, you try really hard, but it's not just a boy-you've lost one friend already, and you don't want to lose the other.

….

"I saw her standing there in the crowd." Luna says to you calmly, pointing in the direction where she had seen Ginny, where Harry had slipped from your sight for just a few terrifying moments, pointing towards where so many had fallen and died. You had screamed as his green eyes closed, screamed because you weren't sure what you'd do if they never opened again. "She had her wand, she was trying to save you…I don't think she even had time to think about the consequences-or, maybe she did, but Ginny decided the consequences didn't matter anymore." Luna smiles sadly, kicking at the ground, and Harry leans over to grip her hand, kissing her on the cheek; you turn away, not wanting to look at them, not wanting to feel the same angry yearning. You are a smart girl, a clever, brilliant witch-yet, you foolishly cling to this dream that he will someday desire you in the same way that you desire him.

Luna has tears in her eyes as Harry kisses her on her cheek again, and you wish once again that it hadn't been _Luna _that Harry had turned to after the incident with the centaurs and Umbridge and Kreacher-you wish it had been you he searched out, wish it had been your name he called out for in his nightmares, when the faces crowded him in, when the nightmares became too much and he could only choke out _her _name, _Luna Luna Luna. _It's bad that it hurts so much even now to see the two of them, but you squeeze your eyes shut, focusing on the important thing, like the bodies that surround you, the friends who have been slain, the enemies who lay dying. Cormac McLaggen-you used to kind of like him, didn't you, just a little? Lavender Brown-poor, poor Lavender, who couldn't have died a worst death than at the hands of Greyback. Ginny Weasley-who looked so young and sad and desperate, her eyes wide as if she were screaming for someone to save her.

You say nothing and you do nothing, just as you have done nothing and said nothing to save these people, your family, your friends. You hold Luna's hand, and you cry on her should as she comforts you, but you find it too hard to do the same when Padma comes up to you with tears in her eyes, asking if you've seen Parvati. (Why did she ask you? Why did you have to point out what remained of Padma's twin? Why?) You remain silent as others around you mourn, and you stand stoic as others break; it is not because you are stronger, but because you are made of stone, so weighted down that you're sinking in the ocean, and there's just no point in trying anymore. You've given up, and it's Luna and Harry who tries to pull you back up, but why save someone as awful as you?

….

You hate soft music, hate the delicate musical notes that float over you, lifting you to some better, happier place, and because it's all a lie, the world is a lie-happiness is a lie. Oppression, cruelty, stupidity, crime-you hate all of these things, you have experienced all these things, and you hate them, but there is nothing to be done about such things. However, you can hate soft music, and there is _something _to be done about the volume of music, so you turn your radio up as loud as it can go, and you sing as loudly as you can, until the neighbours upstairs bang on your roof-that's when you start dancing and singing and crying. There is nothing left to do, there is no one left except for you, poor Hermione Granger, the Muggleborn witch who had fallen in love with the wrong boy.

"_Kiss me,_" you had told him once, not long after Ron had died, because the two of you got drunk together, and because he had been tragically beautiful that day. (Day, it was always day. Doomsday would probably be during the day, but near the end, as it always was-day turning to night turning to eternal damnation while you sat at home and sobbed into your pillow like a teenage girl.) "_Kiss me, Harry_." You had told him, and so he did, even though he was already dating Luna, even though you were technically dating Cormac McLaggen, who was an arse, and who was now dead, just like everyone else. You had told him to kiss you five years ago, and he did, and is it so, so bad that you don't regret kiss at all; it was sloppy and wet and you weren't sure where your hands were supposed to go, but you don't regret it at all.

He had given you his broomstick, along with a couple of personal things, like the map and some letters, smiling as he handed them over, asking _Can you hold onto these for me? It's just going to be for a little while. _You told him yes, even though part of you was convinced this wasn't just _for a little while-_and you were right, weren't you? You were so horribly, horrifyingly right, and you break into a million pieces when Luna calls you, because part of you suspected this would happen, but you didn't do anything about it. How did you not see this-how did anyone not see this, the twenty year old man who was broken as you were, who was just as hurt as you were? Why did you not help him, why didn't you try to save him? How did you not ever see the way he grew quiet, and stopped talking? Why didn't Luna ever say anything-hadn't she seen?

And you miss him, of course, because he was your best friend, and one time, five years ago and two years ago, you loved him more than anyone else in the world. You used to love him, but he was Luna's now, Luna's to the end, and so it is Luna who goes up to speak about _Harry Potter, my fiancé, the most wonderful man in the world. _You talk, too, this awful speech about how much Harry meant to you, how wonderful and talented and amazing he was-how you had never thought him the sort to do this, how you'd never forget him. Not once do you mention the fighting and the cussing and the lonely nights, nor do you mention the way his smile made you tingle or that his favourite food was treacle tart or the fact that he only snored when he was sick. You don't mention the real Harry, you just talk about how amazing and talented he was on a broomstick; it's like you don't know him at all, don't know this young man who is dead now.

"_Kiss me, Harry, because I think I love you." She'd never said anything more truly than that. _


End file.
